Friday, November 30, 2012

The title just about says it all... so far. So far, the journey has been, in a word, fantastic. I was just a little bit crushed to leave Paris, but I feel like that won't be the last time I go. I'm super excited, beyond comprehension, to be in London. Seriously, I might never leave. I love it.
I've seen so much more already on this trip than I thought I would, only because I've been looking. Not just that, I've been looking differently. This journey is definitely intellectual as well as the more obvious physical one. Like I said a few days ago, the things I'm taking pictures of are changing. In Paris, it was all about the people. I think that part of why I was able to make that my focus is that I'd been to Paris before, and I was ready to see something new.
It's been harder in London, because I hadn't ever been here before and I've been busy geeking out about everything like a silly tourist-- which I totally am!-- and I haven't been giving photography much thought, as opposed to just snapping pictures. I've still been trying to set up a shot and be more photographer- like rather than tourist-y, but my subject matter has reverted back to my old stuff: flowers and pretty buildings and stuff. I feel like even though there is quite a lot of that in London, just as there was in Paris, there's also a lot more to London, like there was in Paris.
I was feeling earlier today like I had lost my mojo, so now I think that it's about time I jumped back into the photography project and got some good shots.

Here's to mojo. Go find your own. :) and, as the British would say in this fabulous place, Keep Calm and Carry On!

Also, feel free to carry on to Flickr, where today's set will be an explosion of my geeky-ness about being in London. :D
http://www.flickr.com/photos/anna_elizabeth1/sets/72157632256783592/

Thursday, November 29, 2012

This assignment was tough for me, I'll admit it. I don't think that awkward selfies with my phone camera, particularly ones where I am making a weird face on purpose, count as self portraits. Yes, I take them, and yes, they're of me, but they're not good. And since those don't count, I didn't have a lot to work with-- I don't like how I look in pictures and for the most part I'd rather be on the other side of the camera.

This would be the person I present to my friends. Just chilling, blowing a bubble.

I think, having considered why I don't like seeing myself in pictures for a while, that I don't like it because I'm not altogether sure what I see. So I guess that makes it super awkward when I'm just looking at a picture of myself like.... who is this person? I think that a person is made up of a lot more than what can be seen in one picture, let alone a self portrait, if only because everyone is their own worst critic. I feel like the most accurate self portrait, unless you are seriously self actualized (and let's face it, no one really achieves that until they're old and wise... or old, at least) and confident, is a collage. I think that a self is made up of several other smaller selves: the self that you show the world, the self that you show your close friends and acquaintances, and the self you show only to yourself when you are at your most raw, or just those little pieces that you keep to yourself for whatever reason.

This is a picture of where I feel like my most personal self-- a place in Leadville where I go to hike, meditate, and just be.

Today's flickr will not be featuring many portraits of yours truly, but check out the cool shots of other stuff that I like... it's a part of a much larger collage.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/anna_elizabeth1/sets/72157632256562874/

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Today's topic is death, which I suppose is appropriate, since we visited Pere-Lachaise. It was, hands down, the most beautiful cemetery I've ever been in.
On the topic of my own photography today, I'll just say that my take on it was all about the architecture and the beautiful details in the graves and crypts.
That take can also be transferred to the concept of life and death. If the living give so much to the dead, do they ever really die? If complete strangers come to gawk at the art that is their grave, doesn't a part of them, or at least their family, still live? And another thing, do the dead expect such things from the living, or do the living expect it from the dead-- to be so great that something that magnificent is deserved? Or do the living expect it from the living, knowing that when their time comes, they want to spend eternity becoming dust in the universe in style? Maybe it's a way for the living to make sure they don't forget and aren't forgotten themselves.On that train of thought, photography is a surefire way to make sure that that doesn't happen. Really, what is a photograph but a memory that escapes your mind and becomes part of the physical world that can be touched and seen by others? Photographing anything, a birth, a baby's "firsts," a graduation, a wedding, a death, a funeral, even, and all of the billions of moments in between, become another way of making a monument for the dead. That's really all I have to say on the subject. Death, as it turns out, is not my thing. I'd rather shoot all of the life that precedes it, and the life it creates in architecture and in art.

Check out more pictures of the cemetery and Jasmin's and my reinvention of the Eiffel tower on Flickr!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/anna_elizabeth1/sets/72157632247110489/

Monday, November 26, 2012

I think I've officially discovered that people are my favorite thing to photograph! Maybe. The portrait assignment turned out fabulously, if I do say so myself. Unfortunately, most of my "portraits" are actually candid shots of little kids. I just love them. They are so happy all the time. However, I also got a few, in my opinion, really good shots of other people-- a homeless man cuddling his dog, which was my favorite; a cute old couple walking arm in arm down a street, a pair of (I'm assuming) lovers, and a couple of good shots of classmates. I've almost completely given up on everything I thought I would be photographing-- pretty French buildings, fountains, stained glass, touristy monuments. Hardly did that at all today, aside from a few pictures of the art at the Louvre and the museum itself. But I'm really excited about the stuff I've been photographing, so I'm going to roll with it, and hopefully get a sense of the other.
See more portraits on flickr...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/anna_elizabeth1/sets/72157632111565558/

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Well, I don't even know what to say other than... Versailles was fabulous! It may be pretentious, but I felt like a photographer today instead of a tourist, and I think that that changed not only what I chose to shoot, but also how I did it. The pictures I took today are nothing like the ones I took the last time I went to Versailles. I focused a lot on reflections and shadows today. The biggest difference, though, is that I was taking pictures of people. Last time I toured Versailles, I was a tourist, and I was mad when other random tourists' elbows and noses or whole bodies interrupted my picture. Walking around the gardens today, I actively sought people-- little kids, mostly, because their boundless joy and imagination, and reckless energy, make them, in my opinion, a fabulous subject. Childhood is a different sense of place in itself. So I had a sense of place in Versailles, and a sense of place in childhood, watching these kids explore the gardens with such enthusiasm. On that subject, I think that little kids will become my "thing," so to speak.

I feel like having a sense of place is essential to a photograph, whether its professional or a random selfie on a phone. Something about that place, that moment, encouraged the photographer to take the photo, and that alone, even if the place itself is not obvious in the photo, is still evident.

Check out flickr for more pictures! (not all of them are from Versailles...)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/anna_elizabeth1/sets/72157632107132411/

Friday, November 23, 2012

My world has expanded in increments, a little bit at a time. First, it was not panicking when my mom dropped me off at kindergarten. Then, it was trick-or-treaing all by myself with friends, instead of holding my parents' hands. Eventually, it was going downtown (in my little hometown) alone to be with friends. When I got my license, suddenly it was driving to school, to practice, to rehearsals, to friends' houses by myself, without having to wait around. Soon after that, it was driving out of town. And let me tell you, I thought I was a big deal the first time that happened-- leaving Leadville and driving the 45 minutes to Summit County for movies, shopping, and, to be honest, to say that I could. I still remember the first time I did that trip completely alone. My world got a little bit bigger the first time I drove to Denver alone, too, and that time I could feel it. I remember distinctly the feeling when I passed the point of no return-- where I was definitely going to miss the exit into Summit, the farthest I'd ever gone before. After I moved to college, my world continued to grow as I figured out the light rail, the RTD system, and the area around DU. These were all little steps in comparison. Wednesday morning, I took a big leap. My mom drove me to the airport, where the dawning realization that she would not be coming with me was a little exciting, and a little bit scary. My world grew by enormous proportions in such a short time. Before I knew it I was navigating the Metro in Paris, stopping strangers in the street to ask for directions, and exploring a foreign city, left essentially to my own devices. I have to say, suddenly having your world blow up to that size is a rush. I still haven't come down from that high and it's been two days. Tomorrow, my world will grow a little bit more. And I can't wait.
Check out the flickr stream for today:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/anna_elizabeth1/sets/72157632111072882/

I'm just going to jump right in: photography would not be what it is today, or would not be at all, without these people. So here are some biographies. Enjoy!

Nicephore Niepce—Inventor
of photography! I only owe him my passion and hobby. No biggie. He started out
studying chemistry and physics, which were his passions, at Oratorian Brothers.
There was quite a lot of both of those passions involved in the invention of photography, between
figuring out how to stabilize and fix images projected onto the back of a
camera obscura and then the development of the image with pigments on certain
metals. Niepce achieved success in 1827 with “Point de vue de la fenetre,” the
first photograph, which was created on tin. After this, images were preserved
on polished silver plates after exposing the latent image to iodine vapors. On July
5th 1833, Niépce died suddenly, none of his inventions having being officially
acknowledged.

(Source: http://www.photography-museums.com/pagus/pagus-bio.html)

Louis Daguerre—Daguerre
had been working on a way to capture images from the camera obsura since 1820.
He began workingwith Niepce in
1829. After Niepce’s death in 1833, Daguerre continued this work, and finally
presented, in 1839, the process of what he called a ‘daguerreotype.’ It
consisted of a photographic image on a highly polished, silver-plated sheet of
copper, sensitized with iodine vapors, exposed in a large box camera, developed
in mercury fumes, and stabilized (or fixed) with salt water.

(Source: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dagu/hd_dagu.htm)

Fox-Talbot— In
1839, just after Louis Daguerre
displayed his 'Daguerreotypes' pictures on silver plates to the French Academy
of Sciences. Fox Talbot reported his 'art of photogenic drawing' to the Royal
Society. His process based the prints on paper that had been made light
sensitive, rather than bitumen or copper-paper. Fox Talbot went on to develop
the three primary elements of photography: developing, fixing, and printing.
Although simply exposing photographic paper to the light produced an image, it
required extremely long exposure times. By accident, he discovered that there
was an image after a very short exposure. Although he could not see it, he found
he could chemically develop it into a useful negative. The image on this
negative was then fixed with a chemical solution. This removed the
light-sensitive silver and enabled the picture to be viewed in bright light.
With the negative image, Fox Talbot realized he could repeat the process of
printing from the negative. Consequently, his process could make any number of
positive prints, unlike the Daguerreotypes. He called this the 'calotype' and
patented the process in 1841. The following year was rewarded with a medal from
the Royal Society for his work.

Hippolyte Bayard— ByMarch 1839, Bayard had invented the
process of direct positive photography on paper. The process itself was
relatively straightforward. First, the paper was treated with sodium chloride.
After drying, the paper was submerged in silver nitrate to create silver
chloride, which is sensitive to light. The paper was then exposed to light
until it turned black, washed, dried, and then stored in a portfolio until
needed. Before the paper could be used, it had to be saturated in potassium
iodide, placed into the camera, and then received light exposure. After being
treated in sodium thiosulfate and placed in a bath of ammonia and water, a
positive photographic image would appear on the paper. Unfortunately for Mr.
Bayard, because he never published his process, which actually produced sharper
images than William Henry Fox Talbot's negative photography, his invention was
quickly surpassed by Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre's daguerreotype, which had
the important political patronage that Mr. Bayard's process lacked. It has
therefore perhaps unfairly been relegated to little more than an historical
footnote.

Julia Margaret
Cameron— She took up photography as an amateur—like I did, and like a lot
of us probably did—and sought to apply it to the noble noncommercial aims of
art, she immediately viewed her activity as a professional one, vigorously
copyrighting, exhibiting, publishing, and marketing her photographs. Within
eighteen months she had sold eighty prints to the Victoria and Albert Museum,
established a studio in two of its rooms, and made arrangements with the West
End printseller Colnaghi's to publish and sell her photographs. Cameron
possessed an extraordinary ability to imbue her photographs with a powerful
spiritual content, the quality that separates them from the products of
commercial portrait studios of her time. In a dozen years of work, effectively
ended by the Camerons' departure for Ceylon in 1875, the artist produced
perhaps 900 images—a gallery of vivid portraits and a mirror of the Victorian
soul.

(Source: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/camr/hd_camr.htm)

Lady Clementina
Howarden— Lady Clementian was a noted portrait photographer of the 1860s.
Hawarden first began to experiment with photography in 1857, taking
stereoscopic landscape photographs before moving to large-format, stand-alone
portraits of her daughters. She exhibited her work with the Photographic
Society of London in 1863 and 1864, under the titles 'Studies from Life' and
'Photographic Studies', and was awarded the Society's silver medal in both
years.

Nadar— pseudonym
of Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (6 April 1820, Paris – 23 March 1910), a French
photographer, caricaturist, journalist, novelist and balloonist. From 1895
until his return to Paris in 1909, the Nadar photo studio was in Marseilles. (Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadar_(photographer)_

Gustave Le Gray— Le
Gray originally trained as a painter, studying under François-Édouard Picot and
Paul Delaroche.[1] He even exhibited at the salon in 1848 and 1853. He then
crossed over to photography in the early years of its development.

He made his first daguerreotypes by 1847.[3] His early
photographs included portraits; scenes of nature such as Fontainebleau Forest;
and buildings such as châteaux of the Loire Valley. He taught photography to
students such as Charles Nègre, Henri Le Secq, Nadar, Olympe Aguado, and Maxime
Du Camp.[3][5] In 1851 he became one of the first five photographers hired for
the Missions Héliographiques to document French monuments and buildings.[4][6]
In that same year he helped found the Société Héliographique, the "first
photographic organization in the world".[6] Le Gray published a treatise
on photography, which went through four editions, in 1850, 1851, 1852, and
1854. In 1855 Le Gray opened a "lavishly furnished" studio. At that
time, becoming progressively the official photographer of Napoleon III, he
became a successful portraitist. His most famous work dates from this period,
1856 to 1858, especially his seascapes.

(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Le_Gray)

Diane Arbus— Started out as a fashion photographer, and abandoned that in 1956 to pursue her own work. In 1960, her first published photgraphs appeared in Esquire. Three years later, she received her first Guggenheim Fellowship for her project AMERICAN. She was an instructor at Parson School of Design and at Rhode Island School of Design until 1966; in 1966 she was awarded another Guggenheim Fellowship. Starting in 1968, Arbus was a an instructor of photography at Cooper Union. In 1970, she returned to teaching at RISD, and received the Robert Leavitt Award. She remained an instructor at RISD until her death in July of 1971. Her photo, Castle in Disneyland, is one of my favorites that I came across in my search for her. I like it because at first it looks like a stereotypical haunted castle somewhere in Europe… one doesn’t associate an image like this with Disney, where everything is bright and colorful, and, let’s be honest, chaotic. I think it is the combination of the coloring—black and white—and the fact that the place looks deserted that really makes this photo such a different view of Disney, and that fascinates me.

(Source: http://www.artnet.com/artists/diane-arbus/biography-links)

Susan Sontag— Born
in New York City, and raised in Arizona and California, Susan Sontag was educated
at the University of Chicago, Harvard, Oxford and the Sorbonne; She is novelist,
philosopher, essayist, movie director and playwright, over the past thirty
years she has been a controversial figure, too snobby for many of her critics,
but always ready for a veritably "down to earth" engagement wherever
and whenever human free expression is at stake. Her own films are deeply
inspired by modernist style. The first two, Duet for Cannibals (1969) and
Brother Carl (1971), both shot and produced in Sweden, bear clear influences of
Bergman's reflections about the impossibility of human communication. Letter
from Venice (1983) is an elegiac documentary of a mental tour of melancholia,
while "Promised Lands" is a shocking documentary about
Israel/Palestine that managed to outrage both the pro-Israelis and the
pro-Palestinians at the time of its release in the mid 1970's. Since she was
diagnosed with breast cancer in 1975 (which she eventually overcame during
several years of treatment), she has been involved in thinking and writing
about the role of disease (TB, cancer, AIDS) in contemporary Western society.

(Sources: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0814506/bio)

Sacha Goldberger— Born in 1968, Goldberger has only been on the
photography scene for a year. Last summer, Sacha Goldberger decided he would
take on a very interesting project. He assembled a team who helped him create
an outdoor studio at Bois de Boulogne, a park located near Paris that's 2 1/2
times the size of New York's Central Park. He stopped joggers, asking them for
a favor - would they sprint for him and then pose right after for his camera?
Many obliged. Out of breath, these joggers showed an overwhelming amount of
fatigue on their faces. Goldberger then asked these same people to come into
his professional studio exactly one week later. Using the same light, he asked
them to pose the same way they had before. "I wanted to show the
difference between our natural and brute side versus how we represent ourselves
to society," Goldberger said. "The difference was very
surprising."

I’ve added another photo to this blog, purely because I love
this particular collection. It’s real, and it proves that no one looks
attractive when they work out, so we can all rest easy knowing that we aren’t
alone in our nasty, sweaty, tired looks.